Reply to Which would lose their Deal feed first: Shepherd, Bancroft, or Lafayette?

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Reply to "Which would lose their Deal feed first: Shepherd, Bancroft, or Lafayette?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I got interested in the diversity point - i.e., whether shifting Bancroft and/or Shepherd to the MacFarland cluster would effectively eliminate racial diversity at Deal - and did a little math.

Currently, Deal is 45% white, 31% black, 13% Latino, and a mixture of other races (total of 55% non-white).  I looked at the race percentages of each of the feeder elementary schools, and calculated what Deal's race demographics might look like if Bancroft and Shepherd are rerouted to MacFarland.  If that happens, Deal's student population would be about 1,080, with 65% white / 35% non-white.  [b]But because Deal's capacity is 1200, and DCPS is aiming for 10% at-risk population, those numbers conveniently allow for 120 at-risk students[/b].  I assume almost all of those at-risk students would be non-white.  If that's a valid assumption, then the final balance at Deal without Bancroft/Shepherd would be 58% white / 42% non-white.

Everyone can make their own individual judgments about whether that shift in race diversity is an acceptable side-effect of rerouting Bancroft and Shepherd.  Speaking only for myself, I don't think that shift is a problem.  Several posters had claimed that Deal without Bancroft/Shepherd would be an essentially all-white middle school, and that potential result concerned me because I do think exposing children (and frankly everyone) to race diversity is important.  But these numbers suggest that the fear of an all-white school is simply mistaken.  It seems Deal would still have plenty of non-white diversity even after rerouting Bancroft and Shepherd to MacFarland.

To put things in context, Ward 3 where Deal is located, is about 78% white, 7% Latino, 6% black, 6% Asian, and a mixture of other races.  So either way, Deal itself has far more race diversity than the surrounding area.[/quote]

Except the 10% at-risk set aside hasn't been implemented yet and no one knows if it ever would be.

MacFarland is a wild card here -- because Bancroft students have a right to attend there, as well as Deal. Will families choose this new dual-language option or continue to go to Deal? Will Deal eventually be taken away a la Oyster after a few years once MacFarland is up and running. [/quote]

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